The Studio CEO: Business Coaching For Yoga & Pilates Teachers & Studio Owners

The Assumptive Close: Use this today!

• Jackie Murphy

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How can you transform hesitant leads into loyal, paying clients? Join me, Jackie Murphy, on this episode of the Studio CEO Podcast, as we unpack the magic question that turns indecision into commitment. You’ll learn why indecisiveness not only harms your business but also leaves potential clients stressed and dissatisfied. By embracing a mindset that anticipates success and expects positive responses, you’ll see a noticeable boost in your conversion rates and profitability.

We'll also dive into actionable strategies for mastering sales conversations. Discover the power of asking direct questions to gauge client readiness and the importance of keenly observing body language and listening to responses. This episode introduces you to the Business of Yoga program, designed to equip you with comprehensive tools for handling objections and achieving impressive conversion rates. Whether you’re a yoga studio owner or running another service-based enterprise, these insights are tailored to help you close more sales and thrive in your business.

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Start with the Pack Your Classes Challenge
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Speaker 1:

Picture this you have someone who you think may buy your offer, but you don't know exactly what to say to them to move them forward and get them out of the common. I don't know yet. I'll get back to you response. In this episode I'm going to teach you literally the question that I use to convert and close more paid students in my business, so that you can see results today. Enjoy.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Studio CEO, the only podcast that empowers yoga and Pilates teachers and studio owners to step confidently into their role as CEO. If you are ready to show up with passion, take your business seriously and scale to new heights without burning out, you are in the right place. I'm your host, jackie Murphy, an award-winning certified business coach with over 12 years of experience inside the yoga industry. I have seen firsthand what it takes to build a profitable and scalable business. Join me as we dive into strategies, insights and real world advice that will help you grow your revenue, build a thriving team and create a business that serves you as much as you serve your students. It's time to embrace your inner CEO and make more money without working more. This is just the beginning. You are listening to the Studio CEO Podcast, episode number five, and I am your business coach, jackie Murphy.

Speaker 1:

In this episode, I'm going to help you overcome one of the biggest hurdles that every business owner faces, and that is indecision. Now, in this episode, I'm not talking about your own indecision and the decisions that you have on your plate, but I am talking about helping you to help your students make a decision when it comes to buying from you. They did a study a few years back and they found that 40 to 60% of all sales calls ended within decision. What that means for you is that potentially 60% of your could be customers are out there in the world thinking I don't know if that's for me. I don't know if I'm ready. Maybe I'll decide later. I'll let you know, I'll think about it. You have definitely heard your potential clients or students say those words to you in some form or fashion, and here is why it matters Number one if you could increase your conversion rate just by 40%, your overall profit would increase significantly.

Speaker 1:

You want to do whatever you can to make sure that you are not leaving leads. You're not leaving potential students or potential clients sitting in indecision because they don't know yet if you Now. The second reason that this is important is because all of you listening to this specific podcast have a service-based business that is helping people in some way or another. You might run a Pilates studio and you're helping people literally heal back pain that they suffered with for years. Or you might run a yoga studio and you are helping build a community and empower people in a way they've never experienced before. Maybe you're a coach, maybe you run retreats. No matter what you do, I know that you are doing it to help your students. You're doing it to help them emotionally, mentally and physically find better health Mental health, emotional health or physical health. Your service probably tackles one of those things, and so if that is your end goal in mind, if that's your whole mission of your business, then there's something that you have to know.

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You need to know the effects of living in indecision over a period of time, and this is something that I actually teach inside of the Pack your Classes Challenge. If you weren't at the last challenge, we missed you, but holy moly if you were there. Holy moly if you were there. The momentum, the sales, the leads, the offers that were created inside that one week completely blew me away. Every single time I run this challenge. I am blown away by how much people can create and accomplish in one week. We talked about this in the challenge, though, but what I want everyone to know it's important to bring it to the podcast is that indecision can have many negative effects on your life, including leading to anxiety or stress or depression or other mental disorders.

Speaker 1:

It can cause sleep disruption. It can make it harder. It can put a strain on personal or professional relationships. It can lead to feelings of doubt, insecurity, dissatisfaction. It can have negative consequences for career development. It can negatively impact team morale and productivity. Like listen to the list, you guys.

Speaker 1:

Indecision is not something that you would wish upon your students intentionally, unintentionally. When you leave your students in the I don't know land, when you leave them in that maybe I'll get back to you or I'll follow up or I'll let you know soon, you are adding one more thing to their list of decisions that they need to make that haven't been made. You're adding indecision to their plate, and you would never do that intentionally. You've designed your business to alleviate stress, to relieve anxiety or depression, to lead to feelings of joy and confidence. You've designed your business to literally do the opposite. So if your sales process is unintentionally leaving your students in indecision. That is something that you need to take care of now, and I'm going to teach you in today's episode just one question, one simple question that you can ask that can hopefully help you leave more of your potential clients, your potential students, with a clear decision after a sales conversation with you. Now, in order to teach you what I want to teach you, we have to talk about a principle first. Now, this is a principle that applies in business, but it also applies in your sales conversations.

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When you are the studio CEO, you are leading your company to the vision that you want to create. You are enthusiastically, passionately showing up as the leader day in and day out, and a good leader a good leader, my friends always anticipates success. A good leader knows how to expect to win, and so that is what I want all of you to do when it comes to your sales conversations. I want you to anticipate, or expect buying. I want you to almost assume that the person is going to say yes, the person wants to buy. Of course they do. You have an incredible offer that could absolutely help them.

Speaker 1:

I want you to anticipate that and expect that when you go into the buying process, when you go into the sales conversation, if you're going in thinking, ah, I don't know if they're going to want this, I don't know if my offer is good, maybe it's too expensive. You have just stepped out of the studio CEO role and you need to hop back in, remind yourself that you are leader and get back into the role of anticipating your future success and anticipating the future success of your students or your clients. You have to be the person that holds the space for them to believe that they can accomplish what they want to accomplish. So when you have that locked in, when you know that you are going into a conversation expecting the person to want to buy, anticipating the sale, assuming that they are going to say yes then you can use what I'm about to teach you and this is a pretty in-depth tactic. I will say I'm a little bit like should I teach this on the podcast? Is it too much for the podcast? And I decided no, because this is only one part of the sales conversation, but this is a very crucial and easy thing to implement in your sales conversation. So what you have to know is how to get a lead in your business and how to get them into a sales conversation with you, and what to ask and how to set up the sales conversation so that you're helping the person in the best way possible.

Speaker 1:

But then, if you've done that, if you have been in conversation with a potential student or potential client, what I want you to remember is this you can't get what you don't ask for. You cannot get what you do not ask for, so you have to literally ask for the sale. And the way that I want you to do that is with a tool or a tactic that is sometimes called the assumptive close or it's sometimes called the trial close, and this tool or tactic is something that you're going to pull out of your back pocket once you have buying signals. So, once you know, okay, I'm getting the nod, I'm getting the yes, I'm getting the engagement, I am getting the buying signals, then you can use this, this, and what you're going to do is ask a option ended question. What that would look like is saying amazing, this is exactly what you're looking for. If you were to move forward, would you do option A or option B, you understand? So you're asking an option-ended question, where it already assumes that they're gonna move forward, and now we're just figuring out how they would like to move forward. So let's break this down. I'm gonna give you some examples of how I use this three different examples and then you can take it and use it today in your business and send me a message on Instagram when you close clients from this. So the first way that you can use this is when you're parenting your toddler and I know that's not what you expected me to say right there, but I want to give you this example because I think it will help you understand what this does for your client.

Speaker 1:

Now I have a three-year-old and an almost two-year-old. Holy moly, they're growing so fast, and when it's time for my three-year-old to go out of the house, it's not an option. We have somewhere to go. This is where we're headed. I give him a couple options. I say, hey, it's time to go. Would you like to wear your white shoes or would you like to wear your light up shoes? He typically chooses the light up shoes, but you can see in this moment that I'm getting his buy-in on something that is already assumed to happen. I could go to him and be like we're leaving, put your shoes on, let's go and he would fight me.

Speaker 1:

Toddlers want control. Toddlers want control. They want it to feel like it was their idea, they want to feel like they picked it out. And so, instead of being the authoritative leader, we're doing this right now. My way, I say wait a second, let me be the transformational leader who says hey, this is where we're headed. What's your opinion? Would you like to wear these white shoes or these light up shoes? So we're taking the same concept and you're going to use it in your business.

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So let's say that you've had someone come into your studio and they have been on your intro offer and they have taken class at the studio and you're having the sales conversation and you're seeing the buying signals and you're going to say great, this sounds like exactly what you are looking for. Would you like to do the monthly unlimited option, or we can get you set up with the annual option. So I'm assuming that they're buying membership. I'm not giving them the option to buy a class pack or a drop-in. I'm saying membership is the thing for you. How would you like to have your membership delivered? Would you like to have it monthly or would you like to do an annual option? Now you could go into the benefits of each and it would probably lead to a conversation. But that is how you would use it in a membership conversation.

Speaker 1:

The other place that we used to use this so much inside of the studio is when we were selling teacher training. Now teacher trainings are typically a higher price point investment I would say around $3,000 to $4,000. And so when you are getting the buying signals from somebody, it can feel scarier to close that higher price point offer. But it is no different than closing a drop-in or a membership or a class pack. It's no different than selling your free thing either.

Speaker 1:

But in that conversation with the person who wants to do teacher training, I might say something along the lines of like hey, you know, it sounds like teacher training is going to be perfect for you, or it sounds like this is exactly what you've been looking for for your life. We have a couple different options. What we can do is set you up with the six-month payment plan, or you can pay in full and get a pretty steep discount on the training itself. Which one would you like to do? So I'm giving two different options for them to choose from Now. In both of those examples. They were options based on price and how they wanted to pay and you could do that. But you could also use something along the lines of like oh my God, let's say it's a private client, it sounds like private work is perfect for you. Would you like to get started this week or next week? Boom, we're asking you're getting started. When would you like to get started? When you do this, you're offering these alternate choices. You're offering these alternate options.

Speaker 1:

You're going to really be watching for how they respond. What's their body language? Do they pull back? What do they say? And that's really going to give you more information about how close they are to making that firm decision with. I'm paying this way. We're starting on this day and we're moving forward, but you have to ask the question and from the question, you will have the information necessary to actually close the person that you were talking to on the sales call. All right, my friends, use this in your sales conversations this week. You can always send me a message it's thebusinessofyoga on Instagram and let me know how it goes If you are looking for the full understanding of how to run a sales conversation, how to get someone on a sales call, what questions to ask how long should it be?

Speaker 1:

What should it look like? If you want the breakdown of literally what to say, how to handle any objection the typical objections that come up then you have to be inside the business of yoga program and that is where I literally teach you how to step-by-step have a sales conversation. Plus, you can get coaching from me and my other expert coaches on making sure that your sales conversations are converting above industry average. Most of my clients are seeing 60 to 80% conversion rates on their sales conversations because of the process that we teach inside of the Business of Yoga program. So we will link it below. You can either let's do it right now you can either join, pay in full or you can choose a three-month payment plan and it gives you an entire year of business coaching and the entire course to learn the skills and tactics that you need to market and sell your business. So I will see you inside of the Business of Yoga program and talk to you in the next episode.